Webcomic /
Penny Arcade

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Penny Arcade is a Gaming Webcomic, created by Mike "Gabe" Krahulik (art) and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins (writing) and updating on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. From its humble beginnings in late 1998, the comic has inspired countless imitators and grown into a veritable household name; the franchise has its own convention (PAX) and charity (Child's Play), as well as several commissions.

Although most of the comics are connected to Video Games in some manner, it is not exclusively a gaming comic; much of the humor is drawn from real-life experience, as well as character interaction, both with the authors' alter-egos and with their friends.

Notable for being one of the few webcomics to actually divide up art and writing duties between an artist and a writer, with the pretty obvious result that both the art and the writing are far better than most webcomics, which tend to be solo affairs. While the benefits to dividing up the duties are obvious, the pitfalls keep most webcomics from following suit: mostly, it is really really hard to get two people to agree on how their ideal comic should look and feel, and in the rare cases where they do, wildly successful comics can generate enough money to cause problems between them. Gabe and Tycho make it work, even while enjoying wild success.

The Penny Arcade Expo, aka PAX, a convention featuring gaming of all kinds. There are now five PAXes yearly: three general ones in the US (West, East, and South), one in Australia, and an "Unplugged" one with a focus on tabletop games.

Various video series, including DLC PodShow, which shows Mike drawing the comics featured in the podcasts; Livescream, which shows the office cowards playing scary games; You're Gonna Love It, which is where employees show terrible games to each other; Play Date, where employees show each other their favorite titles; and First 15, which show Gabe and Tycho playing through the - you guessed it - first fifteen minutes of a game neither has played before.

Author Avatar: Retroactively so — Tycho and Gabe were not originally meant to represent the creators, but too many readers assumed that they did and eventually Jerry and Mike just went with that. Jerry's posts sometimes mention that while Tycho draws from Jerry and Gabe from Mike, their characters are distinct from their creators and the real story is redistributed to the appropriate character. For instance, he was the one that wanted to give away free waffles at their convention booth, but it wasn't something Tycho would do, so their roles were switched for the comic.

Alluded to when Gabe comes to Tycho with the problem that he's painted himself into a corner with his D&D campaign. Tycho's solution is to say "A Wizard Did Something", and when Gabe tries to clarify a specific question, to say it louder.

Bare Your Midriff: Anne does this in the earlier strips. As have both Kara and Brenna.

Bland-Name Product: Most products are named and mocked, but in twostrips they were under a non-disclosure agreement, and decided to illustrate how silly the whole NDA thing is. There have been store and restaurant names such as GameShop, Taco Hole, and Wang's Chinese Restaurant, though Tycho once did refer to Barnes & Noble by its real name.

Bold Inflation: Frequently, both in the comic and news posts, usually in places where one might naturally emphasize a word when speaking aloud. The tendency was lampshaded in one post where Tycho admits he "might have a problem with italics".

As mentioned earlier, the Fruit Fucker was renamed "Juice Bot" when appearing in Monday Night Combat. Also, in Poker Night at the Inventory, the Fruit Fucker appears on an unlockable table, but it is referred to as "Fruit Friend" (and even if you have the swearing uncensored, it still appears as "Fruit Friend").

Gabe cannot resist this in "premium content" model games such as League of Legends, often leading to him walking around in top-tier gear days into a game.

Mike states that he used to do this, but as he's gotten older, the experience has increasingly soured for him, and for the most part, he plays games to enjoy them instead.

Brick Joke: Most people forgot about the Pac-Man watch, what with it not being mentioned for years. Then came the announcement that it's a Team Fortress 2 Spy unlock through Poker Night at the Inventory.

Bullying a Dragon: Anyone who tries to push around Jerry and Mike. Penny Arcade has a huge following, and most of them are very internet-savvy. Do not attempt to threaten or bully its creators or their friends. You will be destroyed. Ocean Marketing and Jack Thompson found this out the hard way.

Character Blog: The corresponding blogs on the strips. More prevalent a few years ago, when the two would often argue on the front page, something that almost never happens anymore.

Characterization Marches On: When the strip started, Tycho and Gabe were more or less interchangeable, with Tycho serving slightly as a Straight Man to Gabe's enthusiasm. As the strip moved on, they experienced wildly different development, with Tycho evolving into his current sexually depraved intellectual persona, while Gabe became dumber, more unhinged and randomly violent.

Continuity Nod: Fairly odd for a webcomic that features the main characters dying horrible deaths on a regular basis, but one comic introduced us to the idea that Tycho can't deal with the sun. More than six years later, Tycho is again seen trying to protect himself (although he only uses the helmet). And once more.

Cosmic Horror: The recurring concept and species known as the Deepcrow.

The nameless entity that possesses Tycho after his nightmares about Hell in the late 90's, which occasionally manifests itself during moments of rage, most memorably here

Crossover: Telltale's Poker Night at the Inventory, sure it's typical for them to crossover a Video Game seeing that it's a gamer webcomic, but its really unlikely for them to crossover a Web Original and a Comic Book.

Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Gabe. Not only is he the Cardboard Tube Samurai - whose skills may carry over in some form to his civilian persona - but he has received a blood transfusion from Spider-Man, and may be Darth Vader's son. Taking all this into account, Gabe may have the potential to be a web-slinging force-adept with the ability to slice things to shreds with a perfectly round tube, to say nothing of the potential synergy between spider-sense and force awareness. He's also the Beta Whisperer.

The Dark Age of Comic Books: Parodied with a Dark Age-style Comic Jumper◊comic◊ done by Gabe, and the subsequent Rob Liefeld pose contest for an Xbox with the Dark Age-style Comic Jumper, which Rob Liefeld even entered but lost due to using photoshop and this one◊ won the contest for being 'disturbing and confusing' just like a real Liefeld artwork.

It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets: - There is no piracy. - To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault. - If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle. It's like, who wouldn't want to bend over backward in their service? You need to know it, because nobody else is going to tell you: you guys sound like Goddamned subway vagrants.

Early Installment Weirdness: The presence of some of the PA staff such as Batjew and Safety Monkey in some of the early 2000's strips, as well as them having their own posts on the front page, something which hasnt been seen in years.

Expy: L. H. Franzibald appears to be some unholy combination of Tim Buckley and either L. Ron Hubbard (creator of Scientology) or R.A. Salvatore (creator of Drizz't)— mostly Tim (and yes it's based on an outfit he wore, sunglasses and all).

Fourth-Wall Portrait: Gabe and Tycho look almost nothing like their real-life alter egos. In "Perhaps Too Real", Gabe tried to update the strip with a more detailed look, resulting in grotesque caricatures of Mike and Jerry.

Freudian Trio: Notably absent. Tycho typically fills the Superego role and Gabe is pure Id, but there is no Ego. The two are constantly fighting, and nobody cares enough to moderate. Their former roommate, Jim, was explained as filling the role before his death (canonically predating the comic's entire run).

Heroic BSoD: Tycho goes into one when he sees an ad for a place called "Gamez N Flix", which made the always elegant Tycho go mad.

Heterosexual Life-Partners: Tycho and Gabe, because they seem to spend a lot more time with each other than with their wives and children, and their periodic forays into sexual experimentation never seem to lead them together.

In fact, whenever one of them is stripped down to his skivvies or less, the other is outright disgusted.

Seems to apply to the series creators, too. In case we needed any confirmation, Jerry described Mike in a news post as "He's not my friend; he's more like my arm". He does jokingly make fun of this trope in one newspost where he mentions that "he and Jerry are not together, and only rarely have sex.

Kill It with Fire: Effectively the MO of the Gabe's Dungeons & Dragons wizard Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) in their podcast on the Wizards of the Coast website. Scorching Burst was used to set fire to everything from goblins to zombies to vampires to berserkers to priests to Binwin Bronzebottom, the party's Dwarven Fighter.

Less Embarrassing Term: Doubly subverted in this strip where Gabe takes offence to his belt-mounted carrying bag being called a fanny pack, but then calling the second bag he's wearing a fanny pack.

Literally Prized Possession: Early strips had a Running Gag where Tyco and Gabe would steal a Pacman watch from one another (which served as shorthand for which of them needed to get even with the other this time).

Low Count Gag: Tycho and his nemesis L.H. Franzibald are guests at a convention. Upon entering the hall for their panel, Franzibald notes to Tycho, "I see all your fan turned up." And there is, indeed, a solitary "furnie" on one side of the room.

Multiple Choice Form Letter: Tycho writes one comic this way as he wants to write a comic about the PAX East convention before he attends. Subverted when the first two blanks have been filled in with incredibly generic things virtually guaranteed to occur, then double-subverted when the last panel describes something no one could have predicted. (There really was a grown-ass man cosplaying as Chun-Li at PAX East 2011.)

Not What It Looks Like: Tycho jokingly asks if the stains on Gabe's pants are semen. Gabe rebuffs him him by saying these are his painting pants, for an autobiography... which he's painting entirely in his own semen.

Older Than They Look: Tycho and Gabe continue to look and generally act like slacker twenty-somethings well into their forties. Semi-justified in that they're simultaneously Author Avatars whose lives mirror the creators' and independent entities who operate on cartoon logic, so while physically they're Not Allowed to Grow Old, mentally they've grown into middle-aged men.

Pals with Jesus: Quite literally. Jesus seems to swing by the house frequently and gets along well with Gabe. He's polite to Tycho, but apparently the writer's nonstop blasphemy and questionable morality has already doomed him to Hell.

Tycho: So you're just running Dragonlance? Are you switching it up at all? Gabe: No way. Actually, I'm just reading directly from the book. Every couple of pages I ask them to roll some dice. Then I just nod and keep reading.

I'm given to understand that she has the equivalent of Super Strength in this "trimester" or whatever it is called, and has the capacity to deal aggravated damage. Gabriel informed me yesterday that she lifted a car over her head, and threw that car at another car and then climbed up an office building. After a spectacle like that, your discourse tends to bear the proper reverence.

Product Placement: Surprisingly averted. It's a positively massive webcomic, with thousands of readers and big-name advertisers. Yet, if they mention a game in a positive light, they're playing it and having fun. In fact, some companies don't advertise there, simply because the mention of their game in Penny Arcade is publicity enough.

Purple Prose: Sometimes, Tycho's newsposts fly off into a world of imagination and word-crafting.

Real Life Writes the Plot: Where half of the stories and humor come from, one example being the July 1st, 2013 strip where Gabe insists on building a retro video game arcade in his and Tycho's garage. In real life, Mike Krahulik had been doing just that in his garage

The Rival: Scott Kurtz of PvP. In reality he has collaborated with the boys many times, but in the strip he inevitably gets dubbed 'Steve Kuntz' and Mis-blamed for anything controversial. Scott briefly worked out of the PA offices, although he and PA have now gone their separate ways.

Robot Buddy: Div, subverted. Although if you wanna get technical, Div isn't really a robot so much as he is a personification.

Leaches into real life, as Penny Arcade Company frequently hosts ping-pong tournaments at their offices against game developers and reviewers. This has led to some instances of calling out that have backfired. Especially with regards to SOE.

Also, Warcraft games. One of the strips has Gabe mentioning having a glass eye as the result of a Warcraft 2 game that got out of hand.

Sophisticated as Hell: Some days, it's some of the most erudite commentary on videogame culture out there. Other days, it's a series of knob gags. That's not even when it's "Semen Week". This is basically Terry Holkins' stock and trade, as all of the non-comic blog posts are written so much in this style that it's easy to imagine them in Tycho's voice.

Tycho. For a man with that big of a vocabulary, he sure does love using the F word. For example, "Things, Part Two".

In "The Verdict": "On the charge of manslaughter, we the jury find the defendant, Jonathan Gabriel, not guilty. Furthermore, the jury believes the deceased totally had it coming to him, on the account of the bogus shit he said about 'Jesse's Girl'."

Spin-Off: By now, Penny Arcade has spun off a bunch of side projects. Some were jokes from the strip that took on lives of their own, others were the creators taking the chance to do something different:

The Cardboard Tube Samurai, one of the oldest, got started when Gabe started waving a cardboard tube around like a katana, pretending he was a samurai. The character now gets pulled out whenever the creators feel like telling a serious samurai tale, never mind that the thing's made of cardboard.

They eventually put together a event week where the strips were pitches for new projects, and the fans voted on what they'd focus on first: Lookouts, Automata, and Jim Darkmagic.

They've since presented another round of potential spinoffs like Sand and Queen of Bells. One, The New Kid, has already been optioned for a movie.

Springtime for Hitler: Twisp and Catsby, which Gabe and Tycho intended to be so horrible that nobody would enjoy it. They became immensely popular instead, much to the creators' disbelief, and remain a favorite when they want to do something surrealistic.

One of the appearances of the Victorian duo was a children's book written for one of their kids, in fact.

Staging an Intervention: In one comic ("Just When I Get Out"), Tycho assumes that his "friends" are staging an intervention. He makes an emotional confession of his drinking problem and of thinking that nobody cared, and is grateful and optimistic now that they're rallying around him. Actually, they're there to pressure him into something else, and explicitly don't care about his problem.

The "solo comics" from when they supposedly fell out with each other: Tycho's is erudite but very poorly drawn; Gabe's is well-drawn but is just three unconnected panels of terrible things happening to Tycho.

It's like when you download something off BitTorrent - something legal!!! - and the client begins by creating an entire empty file to contain the wholly legitimate, fully licensed content you are grabbing from an authorized source.

Tycho: There was always one thing missing from your tabletop journey: a new version to revile, and an old version for you to cling to like a drowning man. Gabe: I don't know what you're talking about, but D&D sucks now. I'm going to go online and argue about it. Tycho: Godspeed. Brother.

"[Gabe's] the devil. No, he's like a devil perched up on the shoulders of another devil, wearing an overcoat so as to appear as a single, larger devil. It's a classic bit, and ordinarily it would be harmless. But in this case, it has terrifying ramifications."

Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: There was a strip where Gabriel experienced this problem with Tomb Raider (2013), trying to figure out a way to get across a gap when Tycho suggests simply jumping over, which works, to which he responds "I don't think this is a puzzle room".

Unexplained Recovery: Brenna returned almost a year after Tycho accidentally killed her with no explanation.

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